eyes as I gazed. Her face in all its blood-splashed purity tried to smile. She licked her lips, those soft, sweet perfect lips.
'The monster-?'
'The lairgodont is dead, my Lady. There is nothing to fear.'
'Then you-' And she raised herself, turning that imperious head to look. She saw the lairgodont. She saw me holding the reins of the sectrix, and she smiled.
'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, it is all right now. Hai, Jikai!'
'Perhaps, my Lady,' I said. 'It was a small Jikai.' Her hair was a deep glossy black, curled in the fashion of the inner sea. A shadow crossed her face and her brown eyes widened on me. She reached a small firm white hand and gripped my arm.
'My lord Gafard! He is — he is-?'
'He is safe, my Lady.' I felt the enormous attraction of this girl, a sensation I could not understand or explain. I thought she would respond to a small jest. 'Judging by his shouts he is very sound of wind and limb — my Lady.'
She stared at me, a long, level look. 'Yes. Yes — I have seen you about the camp. I think I can trust you. You are this Gadak of whom my beloved speaks?'
'I am Gadak.'
'And you are — as is he-'
I interrupted, always a rash thing for a mere soldier to do when speaking with a highborn lady. 'Yes, my Lady. We are both. But it does not matter — you are safe.'
She was a highborn lady. I felt that. I picked her up and felt her firm and warm in my arms and so carried her to the sectrix, who stayed calm now that it could smell dead lairgodont instead of ravening lairgodont. I did not wish to put the longsword all bloody back into the scabbard, even though this scabbard had not been made up for me by my beloved Delia. . I noticed the way she spoke so unaffectedly of Gafard. Perhaps, after all, there was a real affection, a deep love, between them?
How painful it must be for her, then! I knew nothing of her history, but if she was Grodnim by birth, then a love for a renegade would reduce her in the eyes of her family. If she was Zairian and had been captured, perhaps made slave, then how much more painful it must be to receive wealth and privilege and love from a man who had turned his back on Zair.
I looped the bloodied longsword through a rear strap and let it dangle. If it thwacked the beast a little it would help it along. It had done well. I would revise my opinion of sectrixes in its favor. Its name was Blue Cloud, and it was expensive, a gift from Gafard.
I took the girl in my arms again and mounted up, a trick I knew well from the days when I rode with my incomparable Delia. I held the girl close to my breast, supporting her, feeling her warm, firm body against mine, and she placed her slender arms about my neck. So we rode back to Gafard. We spoke but little, silly inconsequential stuff, for she was a great lady and the shock of her experience had not all worn off, although she affected to regard it as a mere incident. A fold of the veil tangled about her waist and the hunting gown were all of green, yet the lairgodont’s blood had splattered them with red. I felt the enormous attraction of this girl, for I judged she was still very young, and the perfection of her beauty would set any man mad and inflamed with passion. Yet I felt a strange otherly feeling for her in which my own profound and abiding love for Delia formed an inseparable part. As we rode back over the dust and left the dead monster behind, I thought about the many beautiful women I have known upon Kregen and of them all — even Mayfwy and certain others — none would have moved me had I never known Delia. But this girl might have. . Had I never met my Delia, then this girl, I thought, might have come in her time to take my Delia’s place. And this, I thought, as I reined up, was blasphemy. Gafard had limped out after us, raving. He had seen most of what had gone on. Like a warrior he had brought his sword with him. He was shaking. His face showed dirty gray beneath the bronze suntan.
'My heart! My heart!' He limped forward, desperate.
I set the girl upon the ground and she tottered.
'My beloved!' she cried.
Gafard dropped his longsword. The gleaming blade and the ornate hilt encrusted with jewels, all the symbolic power of the weapon, went into the dust. He took the girl in his arms. They held each other close. I walked away.
Yes, I thought, yes, there is genuine love here.
I, a grim old fighting-man, can understand love.
After a space, when I looked back, I saw that Gafard had adjusted what was left of the green veil, drawing it up to hide the glory of the girl’s face. He called her his pearl, his heart, the beloved of his days. He did not use her name.
That, too, I understood.
When, after a time, others of his retinue found us, he became all harsh authority, damning and blasting, calling down the wrath of Grotal the Reducer upon the beaters. He shouted passionately for his guards to take the head beaters and flog them and if they would not die to draw out their bowels until they did. Old-snake, torture, hideous death, would be their portion for allowing for a single instant any danger to his divine beloved. He desisted in his anger against them only when the girl pleaded for their lives.
'Jikaider them!' shouted Gafard, incensed, holding the girl as she held him. 'Punish them so that all may know their crimes!'
Flogging them jikaider, with a right-handed and a left-handed man to wield the lash, was horrific punishment. But Gafard was at pain to point out why he was merciful. 'You deserve to be shipped out to the Ice Floes of Sicce! But my Lady of the Stars has interceded for you, and I deny her nothing within my power! Thank her, you cramphs! Her orders are my commands! Go down on your bellies, you rasts, grovel to show your gratitude to the divine — to my beloved.'
The beaters flopped down, howling, crying, wailing out their gratitude that they were to be flogged jikaider.
They were flogged most thoroughly, jikaider, and that night their howls sounded uncannily over the camp, stopping the cowardly and the guilty from much rest. That vicious crisscross flogging opens up a man’s back to the bone. Mere raw lumps of meat, the beaters, by morning. But they would have unguents applied and they’d be carried in litters and, after they’d recovered, would go back to the ranks. Tough, the swod of Kregen, the ordinary common warrior soldier. I wondered if they’d be paid the few obs they would have earned beating for the hunt. The beating had been of a very different kind, poor devils.
And yet, thinking that, next morning as we prepared to get under way again, I realized I’d have done exactly as Gafard had done — more, probably — if harm had come to this girl he called the Lady of the Stars.
In only a few more days we would reach the area in which our operations could start. Then it would be man’s work once more. The hebramen scouting ahead kept more particularly alert, for these wild barbarians were notorious for their cunning and skill in ambush in this hard and sere region. Farther north the land of the tall forests led on and on until, at last, the land of everlasting whiteness was reached. I had no desire at all to journey there. What I did now was a part of the plan I had formed. Duhrra followed me still because I had promised him I knew what I was doing and he had had evidence of that in the past.
'We will for a time act the part of Grodnims, Duhrra of the Days. We do not fight Zairians-'
'No! Mother Zinzu the Blessed forfend!'
'Yet when we reach the Eye of the World again we will have proved ourselves of the Green. Then we may escape.'
'Duh — let us crack a few skulls before that, Dak, my master.'
'I am Gadak now.'
'Aye! And they call me Guhrra, may Zair rot their-'
'Easy, easy. The camp has ears.'
Duhrra had been about the camp, ears cocked, picking up all the scuttlebutt that forever circulates where fighting-men congregate. I wanted to know about this girl, this Lady of the Stars. There was precious little to know. The men speculated on the mysterious occupant of the palankeen and the great tent, of course, in the scabrous way of warriors. The story that had gained the most currency said that she was a Zairian, from Sanurkazz, and had been taken in a swifter by a squadron commanded by Gafard. He had found her in the aft state cabin and from that
